- Featured Favorites
Our Call to Adoption
by Claire and James Toner
CANFP NEWS Winter 2025
With seven kids in our first eight years of marriage, perhaps we’re not obvious spokespersons for natural family planning. In the past, when people have asked us if we plan to have more children, we’d say “God knows” or we’re using “providential family planning”. Looking back, we can see how natural family planning classes have shaped our marriage and our family for the better and provided us with the tool to briefly postpone pregnancy when we felt the need to “take a breath” when our family expanded from two children to five in just five months. NFP facilitates discernment and a default openness to life and the unknowns that entails.
It was about two years into our marriage and a year after our first son Jimmy was born that adoption came up in conversation for the first time. We had both considered it individually, but hadn’t ever talked together about whether we thought adoption might be a part of our family’s future.
We read, prayed, and talked. If we were going to adopt, wouldn’t it be best if we had biological children and adopted children all in a beautiful mix? If we were going to do it sometime, why not now? Natural family planning seems to be about balancing prudence with a willingness to get to yes when the time is right. Children, whoever they are, however they get here, and however long they stay are a gift from God.
We decided to apply to become a resource family through the county to provide a home for children in foster care. We would be open to adoption if the need arose. There were multiple interviews as part of the registration process, and one of the questions that came up was “how worried are you about getting a child with significant needs?” We’d get similar questions from friends and families. Though we realized that it could be and almost assuredly would be very difficult at times, we never worried about it. We felt the reassurance Jesus offers in the Gospel of Matthew: “Do not be anxious about your life…Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Matthew 6:25,28-29. We believed that our families, our friends, and ultimately our Lord would see us through.
One of the strangest parts of becoming a foster parent is the suddenness of it. You have nine months to prepare for a biological child. For a child in foster care, you have hours. The year after our daughter Eleanor was born, we got our first call. All we had to do was say “yes.”
We took home our sweet 4 ½ pound Liliana. She was a dream baby, and even though we didn’t know how long she would be with us, we felt blessed to welcome her into our family. In time we would learn that she needed a permanent home. We also came to learn that her older biological brother, Sirvon, needed a family too. We knew that bringing an older child into our home would be challenging, and we happened to be pregnant with our third biological child at the time. Claire’s mom reassured us, reminding us that “sometimes the hard thing is the right thing to do.” We said yes once more.
For two years we watched our family grow with the addition of these two wonderful children and another biological son, Isaac. At times, it was far from instagram worthy. Actually, most of the time it’s far from instagram worthy, but so much richer, harder, and more joyful than anything a post could capture anyway.
Last year, we welcomed two more children, our biological daughter Audrey, and Sirvon and Liliana’s biological brother Brandon. Amidst the busyness of day to day it has been so important for us to prayerfully consider each of these decisions.
Bringing children into our family through adoption has been a blessing. But adoption is not just a story of love. It is also a story of loss. We pray every day for our children’s birth mom. She is not in a good place, yet still the children she has conceived are bearers of God’s light to so many. One of our biological children said to us after a visit, “Mom, I love Brandon so much that I’ll be sad if he has to leave, but I also wish that Dezirae could keep her baby. It will be beautiful if she gets to be a mom, and it will be beautiful if he gets to stay in our family. Either way it will be beautiful.” Beautiful. That is always God’s design. Over the years we’ve been witness to beautiful things. We have had some wonderful highs and some disheartening lows. Brandon has significant medical needs, and there are many uncertainties about his future. Yet we feel at peace with the challenges and the unknowns because we have already seen God’s grace at work in our family. We often feel as though we are on that boat in the middle of the storm on the Sea of Galilee. But then we are reminded to not be afraid and to have faith. Jesus was on that boat and he is present amidst the storms of our life too.
Our friends and family have poured out support when we’ve needed it. Our children have grown as siblings, and we’ve grown as husband and wife. Our family today is like nothing we imagined before we began to talk about adoption in the car by the Russian River. There’s an old joke that when we make plans God laughs. If God laughs, it’s with the joy of knowing that His imagination and His plan for us is so much greater than what we plan for ourselves.
We believe the contrast is stark when we consider the message of “choosing life” as opposed to “planned parenthood.” Choosing life is a leap into the unknown. It’s daunting, scary, and there’s plenty of justifiable reasons to worry. But we’re encouraged to act with faith, not fear. God is full of unplanned gifts He’s just waiting to pour out. For us those gifts included three amazing children through foster care and adoption. It’s our prayer that you’re able to welcome whatever God has been preparing your heart for.
About The Author
Claire and James Toner
Claire and James are parishioners at St Joseph Basilica in Alameda, in the Oakland region. James is a proud Notre Dame alum and a Catholic school teacher of 15 years. Claire is a former ballet dancer, now dancing through life with James and their seven children.
Comments
Commenting on articles is a member-only feature. Please sign up for one of our memberships to leave a comment.
Login
Please sign in as a member to comment.
0 Comments
Oldest
